Code Story: Insights from Startup Tech Leaders

Eric Olden grew up in the Bay Area, as one of the few local natives, but enjoys the mountains of Colorado now, outside of Boulder. He and his family love to ski, mountain bike, and even visit the reservoir to do some surfing. Outside of these things, he is passionate ab out landscape architecture, and does it for fun on the side.Prior to his current venture, Eric was running a large division at Oracle, surrounding identity. He saw that most cloud customers were utilizing multiple clouds, but most tooling didn't allow for those cloud identities to play nice together. He saw this opportunity sitting in plain sight, and decided to step out and attack it.This is the creation story of Strata.SponsorsCipherstashTreblleCAST AI FireflyTursoMemberstackLinksWebsite: https://www.strata.io/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/boughtnotsold/Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Barak Glanz is 26 years old, and has done quite a few things in his life. He served in the Israeli Navy prior to jumping into the professional world. He worked for Meta as a student, and has has a few impressive startup failures in different sectors. Outside of tech, he is a rock climber, weight lifter, and likes to play chess. He mentioned that he beat someone in 10 moves before, but attributed it to mistakes of his competitor.A year and a half ago, Barak and his childhood friends shared the personal struggle of learning how to code online. What they noticed was that the current solutions didn't offer helpful ways to practice building real world projects. So they built their own.This is the creation story of Coddy.tech.SponsorsCipherstashTreblleCAST AI FireflyTursoMemberstackLinksWebsite: https://coddy.tech/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/barak-glanzSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

David Hurwitt lives in Burlington, Vermont, and is a married father of 3. And, those kids hav already grown and flown, per Dave's words. Their journey out of the nest into college was a driver behind starting his current venture. Outside of current venture, he is an avid photographer and really enjoys taking pictures, but ensuring there is people in them - cause, he states it's just better that way.Dave spent some time in college admissions in the past. And, as his kids grew up, he started to look into the process again. He found that when visiting a school in person, there wasn't solution that utilized preferences of the graduates, helping them identify patterns to help match them to their perfect school.This is the creation story of Troove.SponsorsCipherstashTreblleCAST AI FireflyTursoMemberstackLinksWebsite: https://www.troove.me/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davehurwittSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Jared Ward grew up in a sporty family, participating in wrestling and football. His background is in supply chain and eCommerce, but outside of this and tech, he is a family man and loves spending time with his kids. With his 7 year old son, he is sharing his love of Zelda, and with his 3 year old daughter, he enjoys taking her to the park and the occasional tickle fight. For himself, he enjoys watching MMA, running marathons, and getting outside to hike.Jared has spent a lot of time in the eCommerce world, serving numerous different roles. What he noticed is that with evolution of eCommerce companies, it is difficult for them to develop a system of record early on. Jared wanted to change all that, and take on the juggernauts head on.This is the creation story of Luminous.SponsorsCipherstashTreblleCAST AI FireflyTursoMemberstackLinksWebsite: https://www.joinluminous.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jared-ward-bb96a115b/Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Vikram Chalana grew up in India, but has been in Seattle over 30 years. He graduated from the University of Washington, and actually met his wife in college. In fact, his kids now go to the same school, so his whole family are Huskies. Outside of tech, he loves anything outdoors - skiing, biking, and kayaking. In fact, at the recording of this episode, he just got back from climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro.Vikram noticed that content marketing has shifted from text to images to videos. In a prior organization, they only had 1 person who was trained to create videos, though the demand for assets was high. After attempting to learn tools to make these videos, he wanted to find a better way to generate this type of content.This is the creation story of Pictory.SponsorsCipherstashTreblleCAST AI FireflyTursoMemberstackLinksWebsite: https://pictory.ai/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vikramchalana/Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Dor Laor lives North of Tel Aviv, Israel, but travels 4 times out of the year to the states. He loves tech, which drives 200% of his day. Outside of tech, he is married with two teenage kids, and enjoys extreme sports. At the time, he does snowboarding and mountain biking, mentioning that the best place to mountain bike was a ski resort in France. He would love to do surfing, but hasn't found the time to hit the waves around Israel.Dor and his co-founder met long ago at another startup. Post acquisition, they listed ideas of what to start building next. They decided to build an operating system like to Linux, and noticed that databases still didn't run faster within their system. They decided to tackle distributed NoSQL databases instead.This is the creation story of ScyllaDB.SponsorsCipherstashTreblleCAST AI FireflyTursoMemberstackLinksWebsite: https://www.scylladb.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dor-laor/Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Artem Koren is now based in Amsterdam, and has been a techy since his early years. He was programming Q-basic and C in 5th grade, and building web applications in High School. Post school at Columbia, he started working at .COM businesses, but found himself dis-enchanted with the state of AI. Outside of tech, he loves chess, attending running club, Jui Jitsu, and cosmology - the study of space, black holes, and things like that.Artem and his co-founder have years of experience in digital transformation. With the latest innovations in AI proving useful, they decided to make digesting, and utilizing, information from meetings easier - using said AI.This is the creation story of Sembly AI.SponsorsCipherstashTreblleCAST AI FireflyTursoMemberstackLinksWebsite: https://www.sembly.ai/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/akorenSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Hello Listeners. This week, we're sharing another episode of the Tools and Weapons podcast, brought to you by our friends at Microsoft.Microsoft’s Chief Technology Officer, Kevin Scott, believes that for AI to benefit everyone, humans must be at the center of its development. His philosophy was shaped by his rural Virginia roots, where he belonged to a hardworking community that used creativity, perseverance, and curiosity to support each other and tackle practical challenges.In this episode, you'll hear about how a culture grounded in human values can lead to safer products, how AI can increase access to critical services like education and medicine, and what Chopin’s G Minor Ballade can teach us about AI and human connection.You can find more Tools and Weapons at codestory.co/toolsandweapons.LinksWebsite: codestory.co/toolsandweaponsSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Adam Nathan was born and raised in New York. His parents were small business owners, his brother is entrepreneur, so starting a business was just in his blood. He has always been interested in complex systems, working in the government and in the airline industry. Outside of tech, he is a big skier, cyclist and works out every day. He's also a big reader, and reads 60-70 books a year.Adam found himself inundated with messages and emails, all surrounding the workflow of reviewing and approving documentation. Keying off what Github accomplished for developers, he wanted to became a centralized, beautiful place, for business users to collaborate on documents.This is the creation story of Almanac.SponsorsCipherstashTreblleCAST AI FireflyTursoMemberstackLinksWebsite: https://almanac.io/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adampnathan/Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Idan Plotnik is a half Russian and half Moroccan, which mainly shows up in the way he cooks. First and foremost though, he is a geek, having worked in computer security from his early days. Outside of tech, he is married to a professional surfer, so he and his wife surf Israel's waves regularly. He is a dad as well, and stays busy putting together lego sets, or cooking delicious fish dishes, in traditional moroccan style.In the past, Idan sold two companies, one of which to Microsoft. At Microsoft, he felt the challenge and the pain of talking to risk management and security folks, begging them to integrate their tooling into the development process - which slowed down delivery. After spending so much time on non-value add activities, he decided to set out and optimize this process.This is the creation story of Apiiro.SponsorsCipherstashTreblleCAST AI FireflyTursoMemberstackLinksWebsite: https://apiiro.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/idanplotnik/Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy